Green Butter and Pink Butter Sandwiches. Yum Yum!

Green Butter and Pink Butter Sandwiches. Yum Yum!

I guess the above title for this particular vignette of a boyhood in the 1950s, growing up at Wyckham Park,outside Dundrum Village in the shadow of the Dublin Mountains, is as relevant as others that come to mind. My bespectacled friend Dennis Cahalane or "Caha" as we dubbed him made his family's house and garden a welcome rendezvous for our gang which included myself, my brothers John and Eddie, the Kennys, the Henseys, the Higgins lads and other chaps mentioned in previous scéalta. Dennis's mother Evelyn was a Mayo woman who was a close relative, perhaps a sibling, of Eamonn Mongey the great Mayo Gaelic football star who played midfield and center half back on the great 1950/1951 Mayo teams which won  All Ireland Gaelic Football Championships back to back. Sad to say Mayo have not won the Sam Maguire Cup since then although they were in this year's final losing to Donegal.  In later years I would run into Eamonn Mongey in his capacity as Probate Registrar in Dublin's Four Courts while I was a solicitor's(lawyer's) apprentice with my Uncle Jim who was in practice at 18 Saint Andrew Street, Dublin. My wife Kate also worked for my Uncle Jim briefly prior to our marriage in the United States. Eamonn Mongey passed away in 2007 after a distinguished career in public service. But I digress. Dennis's father was from Cork and a captain in the Irish Army. He had two sisters. Sheila was the eldest and the name of the "young wan" escapes me although Denise seems to ring a bell. In addition there was a cat known as "Bobby Socks" Cahalane who resided with the family and whose litter box was in the garage. This pompous feline had it's own special swinging door built into the back door of the garage where it could come and go as it pleased. It was  Dennis's back yard which provided the main venue for the impromptu Wyckham Park "Olympics" which we organized one year. Without wishing to appear boastful this was my brainchild fueled by a love of chocolate bars and other sweetshop goodies. Money would be collected from all the participants in advance, delectable sweets such as Cadbury's Chocolate, Crunchies, Aero Bars, Smarties and the like would be purchased with the proceeds, and these would serve as prizes for the various events such as the mile run, sprints, long jump, high jump, and triple jump which we included in our "Olympiad". I was at this stage the top runner in Wyckham Park and a decent jumper so I made out like a bandit winning the lion's share of the aforementioned goodies. John and Eddie no doubt were beneficiaries of my winnings too.

My friend "Caha" went to the same Jesuit preparatory school as I did: Gonzaga College on Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin. He was a class behind me. We would travel to school together on occasion taking the 48A bus. As I recall the bus stop was outside his front door on the Ballinteer Road . The game of importance at Gonzaga College was Rugby and I took to it like a duck to water. It was my favorite sport ranking just above running for me. I did like most other sports too but they paled in comparison to those I mentioned in my estimation although in later years after we had moved to Thurles, County Tipperary, I regretted the fact that I had not taken up Hurling earlier. In order to become proficient in this sport it helps to be born in a hotbed of this great sport like Tipperary where children pick up the camán shortly after they learn to walk. In my view Hurling and Rugby Union are the two best field games to play and watch. In Gonzaga I played on the successive underage Rugby teams, usually as center threequarter, from the under 8s through to the under 12s before our family moved to Thurles and Rugby became no longer an option. Our opponents in these matches included St Mary's, Willow Park, De La Salle Churchtown, St. Conleth's and Belvedere. A player who joined our team after I had been there a few years Con Feighery later played for Ireland as did his older brother Tom. The Feigherys lived on a farm in Dunboyne, Co. Meath, so they had a long commute to school each day. Later they moved to another Jesuit school Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare. A class or two ahead of me was the late Barry Bresnihan who became an Irish and Lions rugby star as well as a world renowned rheumatologist who treated my sister Anne in later years.  My father Gerry , sister Geraldine and perhaps my eldest sister Anne would come to some of the weekend matches to watch me play. We played against other school teams or practiced on Wednesdays and  Saturdays when we had  half days. One of our coaches Father O'Connell was in the mold of Vince Lombardi and would chew out ball hogs like Dennis Quilligan during practice sessions. Quilligan played scrum half and was oblivious to the fact that there were six other members of the backfield waiting for him to pass the ball. During class Father O'Connell rather than teaching us whatever subject he was supposed to  would have those on the rugby team gather around the board while he diagrammed rugby tactics on the blackboard. Talk about your Xs and Os; this man was a fanatic. The non rugby players would be told to study their books. Another priest who coached us would write a report of the previous inter school match and when he lauded your performance in writing and placed the report in the lunch room for all to see one would beam with pride. One time during practice Tony O'Reilly, the famous Ireland and Lions Wing threequarter and one of our heroes was invited in to give us a few tips. We paid rapt attention to the great Tony. The Jesuits were great encouragers to be sure whether in  academics or sports. Our school motto was Ad maiorem Dei gloriam  which means "to the greater glory of God". All the teachers that I remember were Jesuit priests with one exception: Signor Volpi, a short squat temperamental Italian, who taught us French. I remember the textbooks used En Marche (Cours de Francais I and II) by E. Saxelby. The books related the goings on of the Lepine family. One character in the book was named Toto but I cannot remember if this was a young lad or a family dog. The other sports played at Gonzaga were cricket in the summer and tennis. Neither game was to my liking but I did compete in the school sports and won prizes in the 100 yards and 220 yard dashes. Unfortunately one time the prizes I won were a cricket bat and a cricket ball. As mentioned cricket was not a game to my taste but to my mind any sport is better than none at all so I did make use of the bat and ball in Wyckham Park for a time during the summers.
Gonzaga College was on the same grounds as Milltown Park, a Jesuit training college and outside one of the school gates  was another Jesuit  institution then known as the Catholic Workers College.Taking classes there was Dennis Larkin, a son of the great James Larkin, General Secretary of the Workers Union of Ireland. This union had in its earlier days been affiliated with the pro-Soviet Red International of Labor Unions but had  entered the mainstream of the Irish Trade Union movement in the 1930s. During my time at Gonzaga my uncle Father Edmond Kent S.J. was rector of the Catholic Workers College. Subsequently the name was changed to the College of Industrial Relations.

                                         

Gonzaga College Building.

 

The years at Gonzaga were enjoyable. Academics for me were regulated to the sideline and sport and the craic were uppermost in my mind at this time. Apart from "Caha", schoolmates I remember were Michael Laffan, Adrian Kenny, Finnbarr Lloyd, John Murphy, Richard Rice, Dermot O'Brien, Alexis Fitzgerald, Esmonde Smythe, Brian Ruttledge, Stephen and Alphonses O'Mara, Michael Algar and Peter Deevey. I must have been one of the youngest in the class since lads in the class below me like Peter Sutherland, Conor Feighery , Dennis Quilligan and Gareth Sheehan were on the same underage rugby teams as I was. At least that is my recollection. I remember Richard Rice at age 9 or 10 having running spikes when the rest of us were running in bare feet or tennis shoes. Richard was a serious runner and fast enough too. A good friend was Finnbarr Lloyd who sadly passed away a few years ago while at a horse racing meet in the Philippines.  One of the kudos of being a schoolboy in Gonzaga was the availability of cheap season tickets to all Leinster branch rugby games both schools and club games. International match tickets for schoolboys were also readily available and I and "Caha" availed of the opportunity to get our paws on these. One game I can remember well is Ireland v. France in 1955. The great Jean Prat, a wing forward, from the Lourdes club was the pillar of the French team which won 5-3 that day. Other French stars were  Michel Vannier, the full back, and Maurice Prat, a brother of Jean in the center. Included in  the Irish team were the great Jack Kyle, his cousin Noel Henderson, Tony O'Reilly, John O'Meara, Jim McCarthy, Marney Cunningham, and A.C. Pedlow. "Caha" and me were  in the standing room terrace behind the goalposts at the Landsdowne Road end of the ground among some vociferous Frenchmen in red berets who appeared to have some strong drink taken and were in high spirits. We enjoyed their good humored carry on . On the way into the ground there was a mighty throng of rugby fans and the crush was such that we were a little panicky. I remember "Caha's" spectacles were almost falling from his head as the throng moved towards the stadium entrance with "Caha" actually lifted off the ground by the crowd.  He could not raise his hands to put his eyeglasses straight but in the heel of the hunt he was able to keep them on  and to see the match. "Caha" without his glasses would have been a veritable Mr Magoo. A year before we were in the same predicament for the Ireland v. Wales game when we saw the crowd behind us part to make way for a black limousine. We heard someone opine " It is the old shite himself". When the limousine drew level with us we could see a ramrod straight individual with thick glasses looking straight ahead and sure enough it was De Valera, who was Taoiseach(Prime Minister) at the time. In 1956 we saw the great Jack Kyle play what I think was his last game for Ireland when Wales were beaten 11-6. Kyle dropped a great goal from 45 yards out at an acute angle that day. "Caha" and I were in our usual spot behind the goalposts that day. Beside us were some drunken Welshman shouting " Come on the bloody onions!". Later we understood they were referring to the Welsh team whose emblem was an onion relative: the leek. The banter on the terrace added greatly to the occasion.

                 " Before the match was over, before the whistle blew

                    Henderson got the ball and up the wing he flew

                    He passed the ball to O'Reilly and O'Reilly brought it through

                    and that was the great defeat of the bloody English crew"

The legendary half back Doctor Jack Kyle runs at Wales. Kyle was voted Irish player of the 20th Century and is a member of the International Rugby Hall of Fame. 

Two Jesuits who I fondly recall during the few years I spent there were Father Leahy and Father Seán Hutchinson. The former priest taught us Geography in my first year there as an 8 year old. My classmates for some strange reason found the names of two African Rivers: the Limpopo and the Zambezi absolutely hilarious. When Father Leahy mentioned these rivers one of us would start chanting:

          

“The Limpopo, the Limpopo, the Limpopo,

 The Zambezi, the Zambezi, the Zambezi”

Father Leahy would try to suppress a grin which would only encourage us to keep up the crazy chant. Eventually order would be restored. Father Leahy was a new Jesuit and perhaps we took advantage of him but he kept his good humor. Fair play to  him. Father Seán Hutchinson came to Gonzaga from another Jesuit School Coláiste Iognáid in Galway where instruction was through the medium of the Irish language. He taught Irish and was our singing teacher or rather choirmaster. A lady would play the piano and the inimitable Father Seán would lead us in belting out patriotic songs such as :A Nation Once Again, O'Donnell Abú, Kelly of Killane, the Bold Fenian Men, Kevin Barry, The Mountains of Pomeroy, On Carrighdoun, Boolavogue and many more including songs as Gaeilge such as Cill Cais, Maidrín Ruadh, and Trasna na dtonnta. We may not have been the Vienna Boys Choir but we had fun and sang with gusto. One of his expressions was "Tá mé ar buile libhse" which can be translated as "I'm mad at ye". This would be said with a smile on his face when we maybe became a little inattentive . There was not a mean bone in his body and he was a very witty and good humored priest. He certainly contributed greatly to the enjoyment of my time at Gonzaga College. Other Jesuits teaching at the school back then were a Father Redmond, Father Willie White and our rector Father Charles O'Conor Don who was Chief of the Name of the Clan Ó Conchubhair, titular Prince of Connacht and senior descendant of the last High King of Ireland, Ruairí Ó Conhubhair(O'Conor) who died in 1198 AD.

To get back to the title of this vignette we must return to the Cahalane household. When Dennis's birthday would come around there would be a small party for him at his house with his friends in Wyckham Park invited. Mrs Cahalane would invariably make macaroons with a maraschino cherry adorning the top. I  did not find these too desirable but did go for her piece de resistance which were green and pink butter sandwiches. But for the food coloring used which was in actuality without taste we were eating bread and butter which was a staple back then for all of us. The color lent an exotic touch to the bread and butter. Though there was no discernible difference in taste Mrs Cahalane would ask us whether we wanted a green butter or pink butter sandwich. We invariably sampled both since "variety" was the spice of life. Haute Cuisine could be counted on for a "Caha" party. There are more stories to be told of our days in Wyckham Park, Dundrum in County Dublin but my pen or rather my middle finger on my right hand must go into recovery mode for now. More anon.

The Ballinteer Brats and the "Sanyora"

The Ballinteer Brats and the "Sanyora"

Panoramic view of Ticknock Hill (Tigh an Cnoic) taken from Ballycorus. Ticknock was the place where we would make the trek up from Dundrum to go tobogganing in the 1950s on snowy weekends.

Growing up outside the village of Dundrum in South County Dublin reminds me of the song: "Dublin in the Rare Old Times". For some Dubliners it would have been earlier and for others later but for the children of Gerald and Marguerite Kent  I think we all would concur that  it was the glorious 1950s. Looking back I see nothing but happy times, great adventures , cairde maith (good friends) and great characters. As related previously we had moved to our new home at 12 Wyckham Park outside Dundrum Village in the summer of 1952 where I quickly completed my convalescing from my mild bout with rheumatic fever. Soon  after  my recovery I was  in school at the Dominican nuns in Muckross Park in Ranelagh with my sisters Anne and Geraldine. That school year would see me make my First Communion. John was a toddler and Eddie was just about to make his escape from the pram so school was in their not too distant future in 1952. New neighbours moved in next door: the Enrights. Gerry was the father and Haddie was the mother. They had three children: Michael, Deirdre and Anne. Also living with them was an au pair lass from Cooraclare, County Clare named Teresa McCormack who had a great laugh. Mrs Enright was also from Clare and a very nice lady who with her husband Gerry became  good friends of my parents. Michael Enright was older than our other friends in the Wyckham Park "gang" but we came to admire him for his pipe bomb making skills. He and his pal Michael Errity would pass on their expertise to us in later years. We set off these small bombs for the innocent thrill of it . Nascent demolition men we certainly were not. I remember going into the hardware store as a 9 or 10 year old for weedkiller(Sodium Chlorate) "for my father's garden"which we would mix with saltpetre, sulphur  and sugar , to the best of my recollection looking back over a half century or more ago, before putting this explosive mixture into a length of copper or lead pipe "found" near the houses being built in the vicinity. We would then close the pipe at both ends and make a small  hole  with a hammer and nail in the middle for the fuse which was a trail of the aforesaid explosive mixture. We would then light a match and run for cover diving into the nearest hole. We were foolhardy chaps looking back and could have suffered serious injury but our guardian angels were looking after us well. As I recall the ringleaders may have been the oldest of our friends. It was a time when all ages from 4 to 12 or older were part of the gang with the younger ones taking their cue from the older boys.

These were carefree days and there are many more stories to relate so there will have to be more of these jottings. Our friends in the housing development at Wyckham Park were the Kennys, Keatings, the Higgins family, the Stephens lads from Kilkenny, the Dwyers, the Frees, Maurice Cord, Dennis Cahalane, Kevin Byrne, Andre Brennan, Joe Crammond,the Monks family and the Henseys to name just some. The River Slang, a tributary of the River Dargle bordered the side of  Wyckham Park facing towards the Dublin Mountains where we could see the baleful image of the Hellfire Club ruins and the Pine Forest in the distance. It was on the banks of the Slang  where the battles with our mortal enemies the "Ballinteer Brats" took place with the two sides drawn up in battle formation on opposite banks of the river with stones and sticks at the ready. We all became expert at throwing stones. Indeed at least on one occasion I got beaned with a well aimed stone that left a bump and drew blood. Once in a while the enemy would succeed in crossing the Slang and sometimes we had to flee to our houses to escape the ferocious barrage of stones thrown by the "Ballinteer Brats" or "BBs" as we shortened the name to so as to save our breath. One time we did engage them in hand to hand combat and I remember one of the enemy sitting on my head. I eventually shook him off or one of my compadres pulled him off me. This may have been the time when either Malachy Higgins or Willie Stephens overpowered one of the "BB" warriors and rubbed his face in cow dung. Due to the callowness of youth we experienced a feeling of schadenfreude upon seeing the poor guy's plight.    We fought on waste land not yet built upon where cows would stray from nearby fields and leave their calling cards. We won that particular battle but at other times we had to retreat with discretion being the better part of valor as the old adage goes. In retrospect a casual observer might have seen this as class warfare at the time but we would have not seen it that way. The "BBs" lived in public housing whereas our parents were homeowners in a new development although none of us were wealthy and our families struggled to clothe, feed and give us a good education in the Ireland long before the so called Celtic Tiger of recent years. We were completely satisfied with our lot in life and simple things satisfied us all. To us it was just one set of lads  versus another set of lads and we did not see anything of a socio-economic nature in the ongoing "wars".

Dublin Mountains in winter. Snow was more prevalent in the 1950s.

The River Slang was part of our territory. In its waters we would catch pinkeens in jam jars. Once the pinkeens made the jam jar their days were numbered although this was not the intent. Once they were out of the stream their regular diet was gone and the bread we gave them was no use.  Pinkeens were small fish about the size of sardines with a pink underbelly. We had a swimming hole upstream where we had dammed up the waters with tree limbs and other debris. We enjoyed swimming there until one day some mean soul dumped a dead horse in the stream. The River Slang was also the boundary of our back garden where my father had a great vegetable garden. A path ran from our back door the length of the garden. Once upon a time when "Granny" Kehoe was up visiting from Wexford she ambled down the garden with a walking stick in each hand to see the stream. She encountered what she described as a mentally disturbed women on the opposite bank pointing at the stream and   screaming " the ducks! the ducks! the ducks!". There may have been a few ducks there but "Granny" did not wait to see and being of a somewhat nervous disposition  retreated to the house as fast as her arthritic condition would allow . Obviously the appearance of the crone on the opposite bank of the Slang had somewhat unnerved her.

All our friends went to various schools in  Dublin city or other parts of the south County Dublin. The Keatings attended Catholic University School (CUS) off Saint Stephen's Green in the city where my father and his brothers had attended school for a while. The Kennys and the Higgins lads went to the Christian Brothers at Synge Street in Dublin . Both of these schools had numerous famous alumni. Ron Delaney the 1956 Olympic 1500 meters champion was at CUS. My brother John was attending CUS before we left Dublin for Tipperary some years later while our youngest sibling Eddie was with the nuns at Muckross Park. I went on to the Jesuits at Gonzaga College in Ranelagh after I left the nuns at Muckross Park nearby. Dennis Cahalane also went there. The Frees, Henseys, and Stephens lads went to the De La Salle Brothers in nearby Churchtown. Maurice Cord went to the Protestant school known as The High School in the city. Kevin Byrne was a "water rat" as those who went to Westland Row Christian Brothers School were nicknamed. Kevin was a good friend of mine and he was the ringleader of a gang within a gang which he formed. This was the Davy Crockett gang and Kevin designated himself "Davy Crockett" while I as his sidekick was "George Russell".  The rest of the gang were nameless. One of our gang Brian Kenny came up with a name for a heavy piece of coiled wire about three feet long which we would throw haphazardly on the waste land which adjoined the building site and wherever it landed  we would dig for what we hoped would be buried treasure. More often than not we would find a rusty nail or nothing. Once we unearthed a cow's horn though. Brian suggested the name Senora to give our "treasure" finder a name with an old west flavor. So it became the Senora or "Sanyora" as we pronounced it in our best Texas drawls. We were all aficionados of the Old West in those days. Cowboy suits, Davy Crockett coonskin hats, toy six shooters with holsters, and even Hopalong Cassidy pocket watches were desired items as presents at Christmas time and birthdays. We also were voracious readers of cowboy comics and "annuals". Reading the comics we noted the cowpokes saying "whoa" as they stopped their horses. Instead of pronouncing this word like "woe" we Irish cowboys pronounced the word as "hoo-a" when emulating our heroes like Roy Rogers, Buck Jones, Billy the Kid or Lash LaRue. 
Kevin Byrne had a cousin called Brenda Fricker. If the name sounds familiar it is because she played the mother in My Left Foot. Daniel Day-Lewis played Christy Brown, her son. Brenda won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role. Back then she was a blond tomboy who could jump off walls and climb with the best of us. She would visit the Byrnes from time to time and that is why I remember her.

               "Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien make the best bread,

                  bread you can rely on,

               Yes! It's  Johnson , Mooney and O'Brien,

                  for the best baked family pan" (or words to that effect)

There are more stories to be told about the halcyon days in Dundrum during the 1950s and these will follow in future months. One thing that comes to mind, looking back from the perspective of the present time in America where there is an emphasis on "Green Energy", was the number of electric vehicles used to make house deliveries of bread, dry cleaning and other goods in Dublin during the 1950s.  The strangely named Swastika Laundry, Kennedy's Bread and their rival Johnson, Mooney and O'Brien all used electric vans to make deliveries in our neigbourhood. Kennedy's Bread was delivered to us at 12 Wyckham Park. The driver always had the back rollup door opened while going from house to house. We would jump on the back for a ride and occasionally would attempt to purloin a "cream slice", a flaky pastry with real whipped dairy cream and raspberry jam. Once the driver must have completed his deliveries while we were sitting on the back of the van. We ended up not being able to get off for a few miles and had a long walk back for our shenanigans .  I'm sure the driver had a laugh. Served us right I suppose although we were good walkers so there really was no skin off our backs. Milk was delivered by a horse drawn wagon in those days and once when school was not in session I rode with our milkman on a foray through "enemy" territory in Ballinteer where I helped deliver milk for a few pence and had the thrill of getting to hold the reins of the horses.

"The use of the Swastika name for this company was as an ancient symbol of good luck in India; its name originates from the sanskrit svastika."

  The electric van shown above was a common sight in Dublin in the 1950s. The firm had nothing to do with the Nazis and the name was in use before World War II and before anyone had an idea of how evil Herr Hitler would become. Actually according to Wikipedia the laundry was named after a favorite racehorse of the owner with the appellation Swastika Rose. The use of electric delivery vehicles in Dublin at this time goes to show that Ireland may have been at the forefront of the "Green Energy" revolution although I suspect other cities throughout the world were doing the same. On a final note for this particular post we were not customers of the Swastika Laundry but Hughes Brothers Dairy(HB) delivered our dairy products and Kennedy's Bread delivered our batch loaves. To conclude here is a little ditty that we knew and were fond of saying when the bread van would come into view:

" Kennedy's bread
Would kill a man dead
Especially a man
With a baldy head..."

   

   


 

 

Where is Yonda?

Photograph taken in 12 Wyckham Park, Dundrum, Co. Dublin circa 1953 or 1954.

 

I WAS AFRAID OF FALLING INTO THE SKY.

For many years my two lassies and their mother, my good lady wife Kathleen, have been encouraging me to write about my early life in Ireland. Procrastination being my middle name I am now at the age of 66 finally getting around to it perhaps spurred on by some health issues in recent years. My story will end as I sit for the Leaving Certificate at Naas Christian Brothers Secondary School in 1963 almost a half century ago  and shortly before my 18^th birthday. This sketch of a childhood growing up in a vanished Ireland is dedicated to my three beloved ladies: Kate, Siobhán and Máire Brìd or Bridie as the latter daughter is familiarly called by friends and family. In 2009 I finally became an American citizen but still retain a passport for the land of my birth. More than half my life has been spent here in Amerikay toiling to make a living. Kate more than did her part both inside and outside the home. Now that we are both retired it seems like as good a time as any to revisit fond memories of the past including the songs we learned growing up. A song written by Thomas Moore we used to belt out at Gonzaga College under the tutelage of Father Sean Hutchinson S.J. comes readily to mind:

“The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death ye will find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betray thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

However I must go back to the beginning before recalling my years at a Jesuit preparatory school.

I first saw the light of day on August 2^nd 1945 at the Mater Private Nursing Home on Eccles Street on the north side of the River Liffey in dear old Dublin Town. The Mater Hospital as it is commonly known was to figure prominently in the Kent family story.

Not only did my father Gerald Daniel Kent first encounter my mother Marguerite Kehoe, a registered nurse, there while visiting an injured pal but many years later my sister Geraldine met her future husband John Kehoe(no relation to Marguerite) while she was a nurse and he  a medical student. Coincidentally my mother was a nursing student at the Mater while John Kehoe’s father Michael Kehoe was a doctor in training. This was the hospital where I as a 4 year old would later have a tonsillectomy. I can still remember getting the anesthetic which I believe was ether and smelled like moth balls to me  when the device for putting me to sleep was placed over my nose. Within a day or two of the surgery I was up out of bed and playing with a toy double decker bus in the ward. I remember being admonished by a nun-nurse to be quiet. I probably was a holy terror.  I also remember Marietta biscuits and milk being provided which I must have enjoyed since the memory remains.

My parents Gerald and Marguerite have both gone to their eternal reward. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha(May their souls sit at God's right hand). My father’s people lived in Castlelyons, near Fermoy, County Cork for centuries where they were farmers. My grandfather Pierce Kent settled in Dublin after graduating from University College, Dublin  Among his contempories at University were James Joyce, author of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, and Tom Kettle, a man of varied talents, who both courted Mary Sheehy at one point. Tom Kettle would go on to marry Mary Sheehy. Tom Kettle was a first cousin of my grandfather’s wife Leontia Conolly which would make him a first cousin twice removed to my father and thus related to us too. My grandfather was a first cousin of the martyred patriot Thomas Kent. Thomas was shot by a British firing squad in 1916. Thomas’s brother Daithi Kent was a member of the 1919 Dail and refused to join Fianna Fail and enter the Free State Dail with De Valera in 1932.  Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilis. May his faithful soul rest at God’s right hand.

  Bust of Thomas Ceannt(Kent) outside Kent Railway Station in Cork City, Ireland.

My mother Marguerite Kehoe was the daughter of John Kehoe from Tomsallagh, Ferns, County Wexford and Agnes Breen from Wexford Town. After graduating from St. Mary’s Convent School in Arklow, County Wicklow, she was accepted into the Mater Hospital School of Nursing where she later met my father for the first time.

Both my parents placed family first and foremost and provided a loving environment for us children and left us with many fond memories. Through ill health and occasional economic difficulties they loved each other dearly and loved the children God gave them. They both loved to laugh and the memory of that laughter will remain with me forever. During the course of the previous blog entries some of my memories of them have been recalled. This present piece of writing has to do with my memories of living on the Rathgar Road, Rathgar, in the city of Dublin from the late 1940s to the early 1950s before we moved to what could be then considered the “country” in Dundrum, County Dublin, in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountain chain.

My sister Anne and I were born while the family was leasing a home at “Rosaire” on the Rathgar Road near the Church of the Three Patrons which was our parish church and where I have the earliest memory of being at Sunday Mass. I have no memory of this abode although Anne does. Geraldine, John and Eddie, our other siblings arrived in the world when we had moved down the road to “Coolavin” at 161 Rathgar Road. We had a kitchen on the ground floor with the other rooms being on the second and third floor. There was another family, Conaty by name, on the ground floor. The garden was part of our leasing arrangement and my father being an avid gardener spent many hours coaxing vegetables out of the soil there. We had two black Scottish terriers for a time. I believe the story was that they ate poison and died although it may be that they were sold. After that it seemed the only pets around were cats although in later years Eddie got a budgie and called him "Tim". Although we were by no means wealthy we could afford to hire a girl to help out with child caring and light domestic duties. I remember the names Ina, Josie, Mona and Avril over a period of several years. I believe my grandmother in Wexford made the initial contact with these girls who all came up from the model county as Wexford is and was termed. Once one of them got married a replacement was needed and that is why we had a succession of these helpers in a relatively short time. I particularly remember Mona who would read the comics section of the Irish Independent to me and started me out on my lifelong fascination with the Wild West with tales of Hopalong Cassidy and Gabby Hayes read by her from the aforesaid publication. She also introduced me to Curly Wee and Gussie Goose who featured in the paper on a daily basis. I remember Josie or Mona taking us on afternoon strolls to nearby Orwell Park along the banks of the River Dodder with I and Anne walking and Geraldine in a pram. My mother would have been home looking after the baby at the time; my brother John. A little later John would be in the pram and Anne, I and Geraldine would be walking while Eddie was the baby left at home getting the full attention of our mother. In the autumn dusk would fall shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon while we were returning home from these outings. Ireland is at the same latitude as Labrador in Canada and just 750 miles south of Iceland. One could see the reflections of the sky and the street lamps in the River Dodder and I distinctly remember that I was afraid of falling into the sky. It seemed a long way down. Another fear at that time was the sound of thunder and lightning while we were in bed at night. We ascribed a personality to the dreaded sounds and called it by the name “Dorndeens”. I’m not sure where we got the name. Perhaps we figured thunder and lightning sounded like “Dorndeens” to our ears back then. The name sounded scary to us. I was also terrorized by some older kids who lived or visited next door and climbed trees dressed as cowboys and aimed their toy revolvers at me. I really thought they were outlaws from the Wild West. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the belief that these young thugs were grandsons of the long fellow himself Eamon De Valera. Was I told this by someone? This is what I have always believed. In later years it would be me blasting away at some scared kid with my trusty cap gun.

Anne, Geraldine and I all started school together at the ages of 5, 4 and 3 as I recall although Anne may have started a year early. We were guided across the street by my mother or the house helper at the time and made the short journey down the road to Saint Louis Convent School. Perhaps Geraldine and I were in “junior infants” or “low babies” as the beginning classes were incongruously called back then with Anne lording over us in “senior infants” or “high babies”. Mrs. Fagan was the teacher I remember instructing us in the rudiments of the Irish language. She would put a chart on the board with colorful farm animals and have us repeat after her: Sin é bo, sin é cearc, sin é capall, sin é laca, sin é asal (respectively: that is a cow, that is a hen, that is a horse, that is a duck, that is a donkey). One day Mrs. Fagan called to see my mother since  she thought I had a mental problem. Apparently when I got excited I would shake my hands wildly about. Perhaps some of the girls in the class were frightened by this. My mother laughed since she knew I was quite sane and put Mrs. Fagan’s mind to rest. I remember the St. Louis nuns ran an ice cream shop which was open during lunch hour and play periods. One could get a halfpenny worth of ice cream between two wafers from the good sisters. The three of us got to take part in the school play one year; The Wedding of Jack and Jill. Anne and Geraldine starred as a pair of dolls. I got the plum role of Wee Willie Winkie.

“Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown,
Tapping at the window and crying through the lock,
Are all the children in their beds, it's past eight o'clock?”

This was my first and last theatrical performance and I made a faux pas in my brief time on the stage. Attired in my pajamas and bearing a candlestick I and my fellow thespians were divided into two lines one line on the left and the other on the right. I was in the line on the left and we were supposed to head towards the front of the stage in two single files with those on the left under orders to exit the stage on the left and those on the right asked to exit on the right. Despite being on the left I apparently decided to exit on the right contrary to the directions given.  The audience got a laugh so no harm was done. Other memories I have of St Louis School include the excitement caused by a seagull landing on a girl’s head in the schoolyard and the sadness felt upon hearing that a fellow pupil had been hit by a bus. Back then most people did not own motor cars but there were enough vehicles on the road including motor cars, busses and Lorries to make life dangerous. In addition to motorized vehicles, horse drawn commercial wagons delivered milk, bread and groceries to household throughout the city of Dublin. One needed to avoid the piles of horse shite while crossing the street. Being shortly after World War II ration books were still in use in my early childhood days. Some foodstuffs remained in short supply in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Black shawls were commonly worn by woman even in Dublin at this time. All the women selling produce in Moore Street wore shawls and were known as "shawlies" if my memory serves me right. One other memory we have of our time in St. Louis Convent school is landing home frequently with our friend Jimmy Carroll in tow. This "Billy Bunter" lookalike lived on Rostrevor Terrace a few doors down from our Grandfather Pierce Kent . We invited him home for the tea which is what we called the evening meal.Jimmy came for tea on a regular basis. Jimmy was a portly kid with coke bottle spectacles as I recollect him. When a piece of bread and butter was put on his plate he would kick up an unholy racket screaming “Fingers! I want fingers!” Initially this led to some consternation.  My mother was quite perplexed at first but eventually ascertained that young Jimmy always had his bread cut by his mother in narrow “fingers” so since she always aimed to please cut Jimmy’s bread as he required in “fingers” and this made us all happy. In fact we began to want “fingers” for ourselves although this was to be just a passing fad.

Other memories of our time at 161 Rathgar Road would be packages of comic books arriving from Australia where my father’s youngest brother David Kent had emigrated. We could scarcely read but did enjoy the pictures. One time he sent some stuffed koala bears which appear in the photograph included herewith. Another of my father’s brothers Uncle Jim, an attorney, lived down the road from us on the Rathgar Road with his wife Eileen nee Brady and their children Jim, Mary, Margot, Leontia, and Joan. All of us cousins would often convene at my grandfather’s home at 12 Rostrevor Terrace off Orwell Road in Rathgar on a Sunday morning after Mass. Sometimes my other Uncles Pierce and Father Edmond S.J. would be there. Uncle David was in Australia somewhere. My Uncle Pierce lived in Kenya with his wife Alice nee Slattery and their children Leontia, Patricia, Nora and Pierce. The girls had all been born in India with Pierce, the youngest being born in East Africa where my Uncle Pierce, a physician, conducted research at the East Africa Tuberculosis clinic. When Uncle Pierce was home from Kenya he would be at my grandfather's house with his children also. As one can glean Pierce is a common family Christian name with four Pierces featuring in this post. Sounds like a good name for a rock group: the Four Pierces. Back in 1847 during the Great Hunger two Pierce Kents emigrated from the same village in Cork where my grandfather was born and ended up fighting on opposite sides in the American civil war.  More often than not it would be Uncle Jim, Uncle Eddie S.J., my father Gerry and my grandfather Pierce and the children of Uncle Jim along with me and those of our siblings who were able to walk at the time. Our mothers would be home taking care of the babies. Miss Ryan, my grandfather’s jovial housekeeper, would make soup for the men who would then retire to the drawing room and smoke a cigar and have a glass of Jamieson Whiskey. They would stand with their backs to the fire warming themselves and exchanging news and views. We kids would be given cool glasses of milk and Kimberly biscuits and my grandfather invariably produced a bag of caramels from Bewleys, a well-known restaurant and confectioner which sadly has ceased to exist other than the hotel business owned by the same company.  Alas this is another loss of a great Dublin institution. Ah well, c’est la vie.

In 1950 my brother Eddie was born. He was the youngest in our family. Requiescat in Pace. Sadly he passed away in 2010. I remember when Eddie landed up in our house after coming home from the Mater in a wicker basket accompanied by our mother. A bottle of carbonated red lemonade with syphon attached and a box of dates arrived along with Eddie. The excitement was great since we had a new brother and some fizzy lemonade to celebrate his arrival. In 1952 just before I turned 7 my parents purchased a brand new house at 12 Wyckham Park in Dundrum, County Dublin. One day, not long before we moved, I was sitting on the grass eating a banana when I must have picked up rheumatic fever. I complained of a sore toe and had a fever. My mother being a nurse felt that something was the matter and called our family physician appropriately named Doctor Kidney who diagnosed rheumatic fever. I was to be bedridden for a while both on the Rathgar Road and in the new abode. We were on our way to a new home and new adventures. Due to my illness I was not fully able to enjoy the excitement of the move to pastures new. A chapter in all of our lives had come to an end. I know Anne and Geraldine too would have cherished the time spent living in Rathgar as I did. Eddie was a baby there and John just a toddler.

The River Dodder, a tributary of the Liffey, at Rathgar. It was here that I "was afraid of falling into the sky"

Memories of my Irish grandmother: Mrs A.R. Kehoe

Memories of my Irish grandmother; Mrs A.R. Kehoe.

She was the only grandmother we knew ; our maternal grandmother from Wexford Town in Ireland's relatively sunny south-east. She was born and christened Agnes Regis Breen and subsequently married our grandfather John F. Kehoe. He grew up on a Wexford farm. As a young man he was employed as a  drapery assistant at the shoe & drapery business on 16 North Main Street in Wexford. Later by dint of hard work he was able to purchase that  business and it was above this shop that my mother and her other siblings came into the world.

The faded photographic images  above show Agnes as a young married women with her husband John and as a young lassie with her father and one of her sisters. I believe she is the elder of the two girls  shown to the right of the younger sibling in the photo on the right side of the page. The younger sister is probably our Great Aunt Madge(Margaret). Agnes was born in 1888, the second eldest of four daughters of Walter P. Breen and his wife Margaret, who lived at 44 William Street, Wexford Town according to the 1911 Irish Census. In the 1901 census he was shown as living in a lodging house in Rosslare Harbor so he was probably away from the family piloting ships. Our great grandfather is listed as a "Chambel" Pilot. He was a seaman so he may have been involved in guiding vessels into Rosslare Harbor. I cannot find a definition for the word "Chambel" in any dictionary and I won't speculate. Both Walter and Margaret were late vocations to the married state it would appear. The eldest child Mary Ellen, our great aunt "Allie", was born when Margaret would have been 36 years and she had 3 more children, all girls, with the youngest, Great Aunt Elizabeth (Beths),  being born when her mother was 43 years old. The two eldest daughters are listed as "commercial clerks" in the 1911 census while the two youngest worked as Drapery Assistants. Back then adult children remained in the parents home until they got married.

Shortly after I was born "Granny" Kehoe would have paid us a visit to our rented home on the Rathgar Road in Dublin to help her daughter. I have no memory of this visit of course but know about it since she told me later that I looked like "a little sausage". This probably referred to the fact that I weighed scarcely 4 lbs at birth.

I vividly recall a train trip taken around 1948 accompanied by my mother, my sister Anne and probably my younger sister Geraldine. My brothers John and Eddie had yet to bestride the world stage. We departed from the old Harcourt Street Railway Station in Dublin on a Wexford bound train. No doubt we were jumping out of our skins with the excitement of it all, this being I'm pretty sure our first time on a train. We were off to see "Granny" and the Great Aunts. On reflection this would be a good name for a rock group but I digress. We had breakfast on the train in the dining car full of tables replete with white linen table cloths, good chinaware and silverware. None of your paper plates, plastic cutlery or styrofoam beverage containers in the good old days. We had as I recall the full Irish breakfast of rashers, eggs, and pork sausages. The trip took a while since the train stopped at every station on the way but this did not dampen our enthusiasm because of the sheer novelty of it all. The excitement was palpable as we pulled into Wexford Station with a clear view of the Irish Sea.

At that time my grandmother lived above the shop at 16 North Main Street where my mother had been born. After my grandfather John F. Kehoe passed away , his youngest son, our Uncle Pádraig, took over the business and lived above the shop with his mother. He would later marry Lily Doran who I recall as an Audrey Hepburn look-alike in her younger days. My grandfather had built a successful drapery, retail shoe, and auctioneering business during his lifetime. Unfortunately after he departed this mortal coil the business went downhill due no doubt to the travails of the postwar Irish economy. Jobs were scarce and the only option for many was to take the boat to England, America or Australia. Indeed after the business on 16 North Main Street in Wexford went south,Uncle Pádraig and his family departed for Albion's shores like many an Irish family during these hard economic times. This would mean that "Granny" Kehoe would come to live with us for long periods of time and I can tell you this gladdened our hearts even if we had to share her with my mother's siblings and their families in England from time to time. Apart from Uncle Pádraig who lived in Wexford during our visit, my mother's only sister, my godmother Aunt Kay, and her husband Dan Guilfoyle  owned and operated a grocery store in Stafford, England. Another sibling my Uncle Wally and his family lived in Cheshire, England where he worked as a quantity surveyor. Only my mother and Uncle Gerald, a civil engineer with Kerry County Council, remained in Ireland out of the five living siblings. Sadly they are all gone now but remain in our memories.

However returning to our visit to Wexford,at which time I would have been a 3 or 4 year old, I find it curious that I have no recollection of the return train trip to Dublin. Us children were no doubt doted on by "Granny" and the grand aunts . It was exciting to be living above the store,albeit for a wee while, and I recall racing down the stairs to see the customers coming in and out to make purchases. My grandmother helped out in the business. Wexford was originally a Viking settlement like many Irish towns and cities with narrow streets and passageways from the Main Street leading down to the harbor. My grandmother's description of Wexford was "narrow streets and proud people". Nearby was a Franciscan Friary where my mother, who had a lovely voice, sang solo at times in the Church attached to the Friary. The Friars would ring the bells when they ran out of food, the Franciscans being one of the mendicant orders. People would leave their houses and bring them food . As a quid pro quo the good Friars administered to the people's spiritual needs. They had a great influence on my mother's family and Uncle Ger at one time felt he had a vocation to become a Franciscan and was enrolled as a boarder in the Franciscan preparatory college at Multyfarnham in County Westmeath. He subsequently discerned that life as a friar was not for him.

   The  Bullring ,  in Wexford Town, which my grandmother mentioned in some of her tales. The statue depicts a pikeman from the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion against the English oppressor.  

All the while I knew my grandmother she was plagued with severe rheumatoid arthritis and ambulated with the aid of two walking sticks, one in each crippled hand. She was a great example of patience in adversity and I don't recall her ever bewailing her lot. She set an example for her grandchildren when they were beset with various maladies as adults . My eldest sister Anne inherited, unfortunately, the same rheumatoid arthritic condition from "Granny" but she too acquired the same patience and acceptance in adversity. When "Granny" came to us on one of her extended visits she had to ascend the stairs  to get to her bedroom. She was able, as I recall, to make it down the stairs under her own steam albeit it on a festina lente basis but she needed help to get up the stairs. As I was the eldest it was often my task to help her. She would assume a sitting position near the bottom of the stairs and I would place my arms under her arms near the shoulder and scootch her up stair by stair until we reached the top. All the time she would be extolling my strength with words like "You are so strong, Pierce" and I would be bursting my shirt buttons with pride. I would have been maybe 12 years old at the time. She spent a lot of the time praying her Rosary and would also join us in frequently said family Rosaries. A priest would often visit to bring her the Holy Eucharist and to chat with her. No doubt, like the rest of us, she had her human failings but I am certain she is in Heaven with her deceased loved ones having spent 99 years in this vale of tears , much of the time in physical pain, and being a big and  a joyous part of our lives. She would have lived through the 1916 Easter Rising, the subsequent War of Independence, and the Civil War of 1922-1923. She did speak about seeing the notorious "Black and Tans" in Wexford, a British "terrorist" outfit who perpetrated many atrocities in Ireland including burning the town of Balbriggan, County Dublin, to the ground and killing civilians. She would have sided with the Anti-treaty side during the Civil War judging by her fondness for De Valera or "Dev" as she referred to him. "Up Dev" she would opine which probably got my father's goat as he was a devotee of Fine Gael, the political successors of the Pro-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. Later on I found out that David Kent, a surviving brother of the patriot Thomas Kent was strongly Anti-Treaty and I disagreed with my father's position. Not that I was a fan of De Valera who broke with Sinn Fein and entered the Dáil (Parliament) as the leader of a "slightly constitutional party" called Fianna Fail(Soldiers of Destiny). David Kent did the right thing and refused to surrender his principles. I have nothing but admiration for this man. At that time neither politics nor politicians would have been important to us children.  The priorities for the boys would have been Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy or Davy Crockett and other heroes of the Wild West. Anne and Geraldine would have had their interests too. Common to us all was an enthusiasm for our grandmother's ghost stories. We all went to bed at the same time and kept the bedroom doors open so we could shout out "Granny, tell us a ghost story!". The stories would raise the hairs on our heads but we enjoyed the thrill of a good ghostly tale. Some of them had a surprise ending. One tale involved her husband John F. Kehoe as a young lad walking home to the family farm from Wexford at night. Darkness was falling as he set out on the trek home. After a while he heard the clanking of chains behind him. Even though he was scared to look around he did so and saw two red eyes glowing in the dark. He started to run but the bearer of the chains behind him kept pace with him. When he would stop the sound of chains  would stop and when he commenced his journey the clanking of chains would start up again. Exhausted he eventually reached the farm kitchen door and ran in. Behind him was a billy goat with a chain around it's neck. Apparently the old goat had broken his tether and had followed my grandfather for miles. After the scary part of the story we children had a good laugh. Another story involved a dying man, a Protestant rack renter of a landlord, and one of my grandmother's relatives who was looking after him as he awaited the grim reaper . I remember being told of clanking chains and "Old Nick" coming for a soul. Scary stuff indeed. Yes my Grandmother Kehoe presented us with many good memories. One is reminded of one of Thomas Moore's melodies taught to me in school by the inimitable Father Seán Hutchinson S.J., who conducted the choir at my preparatory school in Dublin:


"Oft in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken,
The eyes that shone
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me"

To this day the only tune I know by heart on the piano in my one fingered style is a little bit of Dave Brubeck's Take Five and I have my grandmother to thank for that. She loved her County Wexford and it's heroes of 1798: Father Murphy of Vinegar Hill and Kelly the Boy from Killane. When she lived with us the great Wexford hurling team which won the McCarthy Cup in 1955 and 1956 were in their halcyon days. Some of our and "Granny's" heroes were hurlers like the Rackard brothers, Padge Kehoe, Ned Wheeler, Nick O'Donnell and Art Foley who starred in that mighty Wexford team.The record attendance for an All Ireland Hurling final involved Cork and Wexford in 1954 when a crowd of just under 85,000 came to Croke Park for the game which saw the legendary Christy Ring win an 8th All Ireland medal as he lead Cork to a narrow win. I am sure my paternal grandfather Pierce Kent, a native of Fermoy, Co. Cork, was happy with the outcome even if my Wexford grandmother was not. "Granny" had a playful nature and when we egged her on she would half remove her false teeth with her tongue and make an eerie sound. We got a thrill out of this.

When we were living in Dundrum, in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains(really an extension of the Wicklow chain) our grandmother was on one of her extended visits. One day a colorful character we had dubbed the "Blah Blah man" was on his rounds as a door to door peddler of knick knacks such as combs, hair clips and the like. The "Blah Blah man" had a penchant for muttering loudly to himself and hence his nickname. My mother could see him from the front window approaching the house and being short of change hid under the stairs hoping the peddler would move on. Getting no answer the "Blah Blah man" went around to the back door and peered in the window. "Granny" Kehoe was ensconced in the kitchen reading the newspaper and the kettle was steaming on the stove. The peddler knocked on the window but "Granny" ignored him and continued with her reading probably because she was petrified. The "Blah Blah man " departed and went into to see our neighbor Haddie Enright remarking in his thick brogue that "the young wan was out and the ould geezer was sitting in a chair with the kittle staymin and staymin away" . Later my mother and Haddie had a great laugh about it.

Agnes R. Kehoe, our "granny", had a long life and retained her sharpness to the end. As a new arrival on the shores of Amerikay I was pleased to receive a letter from her full of news and good wishes. Unfortunately the letter is not in my possession and I reget that fact. I have nothing but fond memories of a woman who had lived through turbulent times in Ireland, suffered from painful rheumatoid arthritis for much of her life, helped raise a good family and through all the vicissitudes of her earthly life retained a strong faith in God and a good sense of humor.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dilis.(May her faithful soul rest on God's right hand)

Sunset at Wexford, my Grandmother's birthplace and also the home town of Commodore John Barry known as "the founder of the American Navy".